Garbanzo Toons

Toonophobia

Cox and Forkum demonstrate once again (by way of Little Green Footballs) that they are at the top of their game with this brilliant toon accompanied by important commentary by Christopher Hitchens originally published in Slate. As Mr. Hitchens preciently points out:

The silky ones may be more of a problem in the long term than the flagrantly vicious and crazy ones. Within a short while -- this is a warning -- the shady term "Islamophobia" is going to be smuggled through our customs. Anyone accused of it will be politely but firmly instructed to shut up, and to forfeit the constitutional right to criticize religion. By definition, anyone accused in this way will also be implicitly guilty. Thus the "soft" censorship will triumph, not from any merit in its argument, but from its association with the "hard" censorship that we have seen being imposed over the past weeks. A report ($$) in the New York Times of Feb. 13 was as carefully neutral as could be but nonetheless conveyed the sense of menace. "American Muslim leaders," we were told, are more canny. They have "managed to build effective organizations and achieve greater integration, acceptance and economic success than their brethren in Europe have. They portray the cartoons as a part of a wave of global Islamophobia and have encouraged Muslim groups in Europe to use the same term." In other words, they are leveraging worldwide Islamic violence to drop a discreet message into the American discourse.

Here is a good toon on the subject from Mike Thompson of the Detroit Free Press.

Labels: "islamophobia", Christopher Hitchens, Cox and Forkum, Mike Thompson

posted by Harry @ 7:11 AM